


morbid

by kittenscully



Series: fictober 2020 [14]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Banter, F/M, Flirting, Season/Series 02, Unresolved Sexual Tension, rating for descriptions of a brutally murdered individual on scully's autopsy table, set early s2 pre-abduction arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27016405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully
Summary: Her clinical detachment is mitigated by the absolute fascination in her eyes, and he is in awe of her, despite himself. His little scientist, the best the Bureau has to offer. Elbow deep in guts, and enthusiastic to the core.[fictober day 14]
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: fictober 2020 [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949467
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	morbid

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "That was impressive."

In the recent months, the halls of Quantico have once again become a familiar stomping ground. Mulder finds himself walking them with a spring in his step, youthful enthusiasm to match up with the best of them.

But it’s not the distinct metallic tang in the air or the herds of agents-in-training that have made his recent visits the high point of his weeks. Not the icy glares of teachers, or the familiar color of the walls, no. It’s who he’s here to see.

Down the central walkway, down the stairs. Two rights, and here it is, the first door on his left. Autopsy. He peers through the circular window, cranes his neck. 

There, beside the table, her back to him. Latex-clad hands sorting through scalpels. Painfully straight spine, shifting from foot to foot restlessly. She’s likely been standing all day, first teaching and now doing an autopsy for him in her spare time. 

A workhorse, he thinks. Feathered and deceptively sturdy, well trained and bred to keep on keeping on. Just when he thinks she’s bound to balk, she surprises him by charging forwards. 

Scully peers over her shoulder, finds him with her wide-eyed gaze. Hiis stomach jumps, as if with wings. As if she doesn’t have a horribly mutilated corpse right in front of her. 

No more time to stare. 

“Scully, it’s me,” he pronounces, shoving open the door and forging ahead into the stinging bouquet of various antisceptics and lingering death.

Fluffy hair in a net, scratch-proof safety glasses over her eyes, surgical mask hanging off of one ear. She doesn’t look like she’s sleeping well. He’d thought, at first, that she’d be better off without him, but he’s not so sure anymore. 

“Hi, Mulder.” 

And, despite all of her exhaustion, she smiles. 

It feels miraculous, inconceivable, that the sight of him would ever improve someone’s shitty day. She’s bound to be the eighth wonder of the world for that alone. 

He wants to stride forward and enfold her in his arms, but he suspects the act would be rather un-sterile for a medical setting. Not to mention, unprofessional. The way he sees it, the powers that be won’t give her back to him even if the two of them follow every guideline and social more that the Bureau has to offer. But she’d want to try anyway, keep up appearances, so he settles for a grin in return. 

“How d’you like the new friend I sent you?” He indicates the corpse behind her. 

“Well, he’s excellent conversation,” she deadpans.

“You won’t find better,” he says, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on the little rack in the corner. “Especially not in this building.”

She pulls the surgical mask off the rest of the way, sets her glasses carefully on the table where her instruments are laying. 

“Maybe not most of the time.” 

There’s a sweetness in it, the way that she glances at him sidelong, lips pursed, as if to make sure he catches the implication tucked beneath the words. 

He does. And he misses her too, like hell. 

“So, doc,” he says, leans back against the wall. “What’s the C-O-D?”

“Well,” she starts, tugging on the wrist of one of her gloves. “With this degree of mutilation, identifying the actual cause of death is a bit more complicated than you might imagine.”

That little tilt to her head, that hint of a smirk on her lips. There’s nothing she enjoys more than a good opportunity to display her abnormally advanced intellect, especially if the opportunity is presented in the form of a corpse. 

“As you can see, there’s fractures throughout the thoracic cage, the costal cartilage absolutely destroyed.” She’s indicating the chest area of the poor, deceased soul, which Mulder’s already spent far too long looking at in an attempt to gauge what might’ve done this to him. “That’s probably what would stand out to the casual onlooker, due to the visibility of the damage.”

“That’s definitely what I noticed first,” he says. For her, he doesn’t mind being a casual onlooker. 

“However, you’ll notice the lack of blood on the skin of the chest area,” she continues, running the tip of her finger across the side. “This indicates that all of the chest wounds were post-mortem. As was the removal of various internal organs that you noted in your email to me earlier, specifically the left kidney, left lung, heart, and stomach.”

Her clinical detachment is mitigated by the absolute fascination in her eyes, and he is in awe of her, despite himself. His little scientist, the best the Bureau has to offer. Elbow deep in guts, and enthusiastic to the core. 

“Post-mortem?” Mulder raises an eyebrow. “How post-mortem? Would the organs still have been viable?”

“It’s possible.” Scully moves around the body, towards the head. He averts his eyes, not wanting to see that particular part again. “The damage to the brain was extensive, compounded by the extreme overkill and the perpetrator’s lack of restraint. The trauma was concentrated in the more accessible parts of the head, with particular damage to the frontal lobe and the temporal lobes, as one would expect.” 

Mulder shudders. “Was that what killed him?” 

“Probably,” she shrugs. “It’s difficult to tell which blow exactly was the killing one, due to the notable timespan between strikes and subsequent massive internal hemorrhaging. To be frank, Mulder, his skull looks as if it was tossed around by a bored delivery guy with long-expired fantasies of playing for his college’s basketball team.”

And of course she would crack a joke. Despite the morbidity of the subject matter, the wry twist to her mouth is undeniably charming, and he could easily stare at it forever.

“However,” she continues, sobering her expression. “I’d imagine it was likely the fourth or fifth blow that did the trick.”

“Fourth or fifth of how many?” 

He very nearly doesn’t ask, but she’s so delighted to show off for him that he can’t help it. Hands crossed behind her back, chest pushed out in pride. Full mouth, hiding the hint of a smile in an attempt to seem serious, professional. That little curl of hair, escaped from the net to curl atop her cheek.

“By my count, about sixteen,” she announces. 

“Sixteen blows to the head?” 

“That’s correct.” Scully nods formally. 

He wants to get her back so badly it feels like a stomachache. Tonight, he’ll call Skinner again.

“Well, that was impressive.” He whistles, low, watches her preen. “Christ.”

“I certainly hope He wasn’t looking on,” she says, casting her eyes upwards. 

“If he had a grave, I’m sure he’d be turning like a spitroast at the sight.”

“Mulder,” she chastens, but she doesn’t mean it. 

She’s made it clear that she finds his sacrilegious flair distasteful at best, but she indulges him anyway, in all his cheap jokes and harmless bad habits. Sometimes, he even startles a laugh out of her.

“Well, who, or what, do you think was responsible?” He asks finally.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Mulder, I’m not exactly on active duty anymore,” she points out, gesturing vaguely at the room. “I believe that’s your job.”

Since their split, he’s had to prompt her, on occasion, to properly argue with him. But it’s not as if it’s particularly difficult. 

“If I told you I suspected a beast-man under the influence of the lunar calender, would you find any major cause to disagree?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Dead serious,” he confirms. He’s hardly set on the theory, but she doesn’t need to know that. “Deader than this poor gentleman.”

“A werewolf, Mulder? Really?”

“Ah-ah-ah.” He holds up a finger. “I didn’t mention any wolf-like characteristics, now did I, Scully?” 

“Well, regardless, I’d have numerous causes to disagree,” she says, now even more confident than before. “First of all, there’s the nature of the fractures. Due to the breakage patterns, I’ve been able to conclude that it was nearly all of it was the result of blunt trauma, and thus not the sort of damage that would theoretically be created by any form of claw, tooth, or horn.”

And this is what Mulder misses most, every single day. 

The back and forth, her persistent practicality. Her scientific surety of how very, very wrong he is, and the affection in her face as she tells him so. The way she leans towards him, clearly drawn in just as much as he is by the playful battle of wills. 

" _Nearly_ all?”

“Well, clearly something opened the skin and tissue in the chest area. Other than me, I mean.” She shrugs. “But the edges of the wound would indicate a poorly-wielded knife or knife-like instrument, and again, that damage only occurred post-mortem.”

“So, you think a normal, run-of-the-mill, utterly un-mutated human being did this?” He stands up, crosses his arms. Takes a step towards her.

“I see absolutely no reason to think otherwise,” she replies, stepping forwards herself to meet him in the middle, determined little chin tilted up. “I would conclude that the cause of death, and of the extensive damage to the skeletal and muscular system, was blunt force trauma, caused by a large, rounded instrument, which was applied to the body with extreme force repeatedly over an extended period of time.”

He isn’t sure whether she hears the innuendo, but he can’t ignore it. Not with mere inches between their bodies, and the jumping in his gut that begs him to move even closer. 

“Scully,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Are you flirting with me?”

Of course, he figures that she’ll deny it, roll her eyes and turn away with some comment about his ego. But that isn’t what happens at all.

Instead, her cheeks go ever so slightly pink, those pale eyes widening like twin full moons. 

Her mouth opens, then shuts again, and the flush spreads down to her neck. The sterilized air separating them suddenly seems like nothing at all, and he has the sudden, reckless urge to touch her face, her arm, her waist, anything at all to bring them closer. 

Before he can make any sort of move, she’s stepping back again, her gaze cast at the tile floor as she lets out a nervous laugh. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mulder,” she says, turning back to the corpse, straightening an instrument on her tray that wasn’t crooked to begin with.

It doesn’t take a polygraph, or even a degree in psychology, to know that she’s lying. But he knows better than to call her out. 

He’s never cared much to hold onto anything in his life, never had much worth the effort. Whatever he has with Scully, though, is worth keeping intact. Even if it means preserving them as they are now, submerged in formaldehyde indefinitely and kept in separate jars, side by side.

“The morbid get you all hot and bothered, huh?” He teases. It’s a more obvious effort to lighten the mood, even though he’s realizing now that it may not be entirely a joke.

“I’ll type up my official autopsy report and fax it to your office,” she informs him, giving him the eye roll he’d been expecting before.

“You must’ve been real fun in seventh-grade frog dissection,” he says. “An absolute charmer.”

“The whole baseball team was practically lining up to ask me out,” she replies, her voice thick with sarcasm. 

She’s turned around now, but he can still see the telltale redness on the back of her neck. He’s not sure he’s ever seen her truly embarrassed before, and it makes his insides feel soft, melty even, in the spots that no one else has ever managed to reach. 

For his part, he can’t imagine not being charmed by her, even then, preppy baseball kid that he was.

“Bet you got an A, though.”

“Mulder,” she says, glancing over her shoulder, deathly serious. “I never got anything else.” 

“That’s my girl,” he chuckles. 

And even though he doesn’t mean anything by it, her blush deepens anyway. 


End file.
